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Is Ideology Becoming America's Official Religion?

More than a year after Donald Trump’s stunning victory liberals and conservatives are still struggling to make sense of what feels like a very abnormal “new normal.”

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Liberals tend to argue that Trump is merely the manifestation of an innately unkind, racist and misogynist GOP. Conservatives, on the hand, blame Hillary Clinton’s miserable campaign, failed progressive policies and the Left’s sanctimonious and divisive identity politics. If Trump voters are racist, conservatives ask, why did one-third of American counties that voted twice for Barack Obama twice vote for Trump?

Both sides are eager to be the conscience of conservatism. The Left, however, does not seem to share the Right’s capacity for self-reflection and correction. Liberal voices of self-reflection are hard to find but conservatives have an ample supply. Prominent voices on the Right who argue something has gone horribly awry include U.S. Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Peter Wehner, Bill Kristol, Charlie Sykes and more.

In How the Right Lost its MindSykes – a leading conservative talk radio host and author – writes, “After Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton, the Democrats need to perform and autopsy; Republicans need an exorcism.”

Sykes’ “exorcism” language is colorful and insightful in a way he may not have intended. He scratches the surface of profound cultural changes that are causing the Right and Left to lose their minds.

The Pew Research Center offers two important clues that point to a deeper theory and explanation of our modern madness.

In 2015, Pew noted a dramatic increase in what they call the religious “nones.” Pew describes “nones” as “people who self-identify as atheists or agnostics, as well as those who say their religion is ‘nothing in particular.’” The percent of “nones” jumped from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent in 2014 (an increase from roughly 37 million to 56 million Americans).

Rise of the religious "nones"

Pew Research Center

In a separate study, Pew noted a dramatic increase in political polarization. Pew reported: “Since 1994, the average partisan gap has increased from 15 percentage points to 36 points,” and noted, “the party divide is much wider than any of these demographic differences.”

Political polarization in 1994

Pew Research Center

Political polarization in 2017

Pew Research Center

Pew doesn’t suggest any connection between the decline of traditional religious affiliation and America’s increased polarization but the two may be intimately connected.

Someone who may have seen a connection is the psychologist Carl Jung (1875-1961) who argued that humanity has a “religious instinct” – a deep need to worship something, make sense of the world and develop world-views. Secularists might argue this instinct is a byproduct of evolution and our desire to understand our surroundings. Traditional religious believers, on the other hand, would say Jung’s argument is a more contemporary version of the “God shaped vacuum” notion attributed to Blaise Pascal.

Pascal didn’t actually say “God shaped vacuum” (it’s an apocryphal quote). What he did say was more profound:

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

Jung’s “religious instinct” expresses a similar idea. Writing during the communist era in 1958, Jung argued in The Undiscovered Self that, “You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.”

Jung goes on:

The State takes the place of God; that is why, seen from this angle, the socialist dictatorships are religions and State slavery is a form of worship … The policy of the State is exalted to a creed, the leader or party boss becomes a demigod beyond good and evil, and his votaries are honoured as heroes, martyrs, apostles, missionaries. There is only one truth and beside it no other. It is sacrosanct and above criticism. Anyone who thinks differently is a heretic.

Today, Jung’s theory could be called the Law of the Conservation of Religious Instinct, a social science version of Newton’s law of the conservation of momentum. Religion doesn’t go away. It just goes somewhere else. In America today that place is ideology.

Today’s political rhetoric certainly suggests we’re not less religious but religious about something else. The Left and Right both increasingly use religious or “theologized ideology” to express their views. Conservatives discuss ideological purity as if one can be a backslidden conservative who needs to recommit their life to conservatism around the campfire. Liberals, on the other hand, have turned environmentalism and identity politics into faiths that deride skeptics and describe government-run health care as a transcendent human right.

Nowhere is this more evident than with the reactions to the scandals surrounding U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) and Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama’s special election. Many on the Left and Right are willing to dismiss the accusations, even if true, because both men serve a higher ideological calling. The fact that Franken’s alleged victims are older isn’t much of a defense. Sexual harassment doesn’t have an age of consent.

Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi felt compelled to describe U.S. Representative John Conyers (D-MI) as an “icon” before asking him to resign. There is indeed a fine line between icons and idols. To be clear, the accused are entitled to due process. But the reactions to these alleged actions are telling.

Today, ideology seems to be filling a vacuum left by traditional faith. Elements on both sides have lost their minds. There is an Axis of Hypocrisy uniting rationalizers on both ends.

Liberals need to ask themselves: Why do so many on their side who believe they’re enlightened and post-religious use progressive fundamentalist religious rhetoric to advance their views? Conservatives, meanwhile, need to ask traditional believers whether they really believe the author of string theory and the designer of DNA needs an extra vote in the Senate to orchestrate change? Of course, civic engagement is a virtue, but at what cost? Again, even assuming Roy Moore is innocent, what does it take to disqualify one from serving in high office if sexually abusing minors isn’t egregious enough? The argument that these actions should be ignored in pursuit of a greater ideological good is almost as repulsive as the alleged behavior itself.

In America today, civil religion – referring to a power beyond government in public rituals – has been displaced by uncivil religion – the normalization of demagoguery and relativism in the public square that excuses child abuse when the abuser is pursuing a greater good.

Many on the Left and Right are bowing to the same false god of state power from opposite sides of the altar. The weirdness of today’s cult of personality politics didn’t happen by accident. Pew has identified a gap that ideology has rushed in to fill. The challenge for principled people on both sides is to put ideology back in its place. Ideology is a way to organize ideas and facilitate debate, not to provide meaning, purpose or answers to life’s transcendent and fundamental questions.

I’m the founder of Mars Hill Strategies, a public affairs and public relations firm, and the former communications director for U.S. Senator Tom Coburn. In 2003, I…

I’m the founder of Mars Hill Strategies, a public affairs and public relations firm, and the former communications director for U.S. Senator Tom Coburn. In 2003, I co-authored with Coburn Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders into Insiders, a book about the Class of 1994 and a time when rebels had a cause. I also co-authored with Coburn in 2013 The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America.
I’ve also been honored to work for other conservative leaders including Jim DeMint and Steve Largent. I’ve supported the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday Commission, worked in post-war Yugoslavia, and was a crew member for U2’s Zoo TV tour--for one day.